I am not a Lawyer, but I do know just how screwwed you are if your hard drive crashes, and your back up crashes, or if the judge dosen't accept your electronic media.

And I can tell you with absolute certianty the opposing consel, that's the side that is going to object to your discovery regarding electronic media and the custody of evidence, chain of evidence, well it's just a nightmare!

The whole issue is a nightmare!!!

You make the statment thus:

"You will not have to prove..."

I absolutly guarentee that you will in fact have to prove! You have to fucking PROVE EVERYTHING....

Don't play Lawyer if your not one!

None of us have this kind of cash to make the statments you are making, no matter how well intenioned your meaning.

Your going to find out that Dead Plaintiffs have deep pockets compared to your average DZ. C

How much liability insurance do you carry, cause my lawyer is going to be contacting your lawyer if your system fails and I lose my lawsuit.

"The authenticity of the electronic signature has never been challenged,..."

Good Question, I think I've covered some of this in my prior post, but also consider that we're asking for a lot of customer information up front... Name, Address, Email, Birthdate, Drivers License number or passport (required by UPT), gender, marketing "how did you hear about us". Frankly, it would be a pain in the ass to enter all of that information via a cell phone. Having a keyboards and not making the customer feel like they are supposed to have a phone for this are to very important aspects to the overall customer experience at the DZ. There are also legal concerns, which I covered in an above post.

I am not a Lawyer, but I do know just how screwwed you are if your hard drive crashes, and your back up crashes, or if the judge dosen't accept your electronic media.

And I can tell you with absolute certianty the opposing consel, that's the side that is going to object to your discovery regarding electronic media and the custody of evidence, chain of evidence, well it's just a nightmare!

The whole issue is a nightmare!!!

You make the statment thus:

"You will not have to prove..."

I absolutly guarentee that you will in fact have to prove! You have to fucking PROVE EVERYTHING....

Don't play Lawyer if your not one!

None of us have this kind of cash to make the statments you are making, no matter how well intenioned your meaning.

Your going to find out that Dead Plaintiffs have deep pockets compared to your average DZ. C

I'm not playing lawyer. I made software as instructed by lawyers and business owners. I was told by lawyers that no opposing attorney would ever contest if it was their signature or not. I disclaimed my entire post by making it clear that I am not a lawyer. I am confident however that federal ESIGN laws have been passed by congress (back in 2000) that make electronically signed documents JUST AS VALID as ink signed documents, and that this solution follows all of the capture and encryption laws exactly (I used libraries provided by www.Topaz.com, who use this technology in MANY industries, often to protect many billions of dollars from fraud.)

I am not a Lawyer, but I do know just how screwwed you are if your hard drive crashes, and your back up crashes, or if the judge dosen't accept your electronic media.

Waivers are saved in four places. First, on the local kiosk, then, on the local server, then on a remote server in texas (which has fault talolerant drives, and is protected by armed gaurds 24/7), and lastly, by nightly backups that move the data to new york.

It's a lot more secure than a single stapled packet of paper in a box at the DZ.

I am not a Lawyer, but I do know just how screwwed you are if your hard drive crashes, and your back up crashes, or if the judge dosen't accept your electronic media.

And I can tell you with absolute certianty the opposing consel, that's the side that is going to object to your discovery regarding electronic media and the custody of evidence, chain of evidence, well it's just a nightmare!

The whole issue is a nightmare!!!

You make the statment thus:

"You will not have to prove..."

I absolutly guarentee that you will in fact have to prove! You have to fucking PROVE EVERYTHING....

Don't play Lawyer if your not one!

None of us have this kind of cash to make the statments you are making, no matter how well intenioned your meaning.

Your going to find out that Dead Plaintiffs have deep pockets compared to your average DZ. C

How much liability insurance do you carry, cause my lawyer is going to be contacting your lawyer if your system fails and I lose my lawsuit.

"The authenticity of the electronic signature has never been challenged,..."

The authenticity of electronic signatures are often challenged based on several reason:

Quote:

The signature must be unique to the person using it. The signature must be verifiable. The signature must be under the sole control of the person using it. The electronic signature process must guarantee that the document signed cannot be altered after it has been electronically signed. The electronic signature must capture and preserve the signer's intent, consent, understanding, or responsibility related to a document that is being signed.

I am not a Lawyer, but I do know just how screwwed you are if your hard drive crashes, and your back up crashes, or if the judge dosen't accept your electronic media.

And I can tell you with absolute certianty the opposing consel, that's the side that is going to object to your discovery regarding electronic media and the custody of evidence, chain of evidence, well it's just a nightmare!

The whole issue is a nightmare!!!

You make the statment thus:

"You will not have to prove..."

I absolutly guarentee that you will in fact have to prove! You have to fucking PROVE EVERYTHING....

Don't play Lawyer if your not one!

None of us have this kind of cash to make the statments you are making, no matter how well intenioned your meaning.

Your going to find out that Dead Plaintiffs have deep pockets compared to your average DZ. C

How much liability insurance do you carry, cause my lawyer is going to be contacting your lawyer if your system fails and I lose my lawsuit.

"The authenticity of the electronic signature has never been challenged,..."

Sorry, but you are so totally WRONG!!!

Feel free to prove that one!

Irony

Not really. He's pretty much correct throughout.

On a bright note, "Dead Plaintiffs" sounds like a great name for a band. I Googled it and it doesn't seem to have been taken yet.

Let me prefix all of this by saying that I am not an attorney, and that you should consult your own attorney for his opinion on my words. It is also important to note that laws regarding validity of waivers of liability in general will vary state to state. The authenticity of the electronic signature has never been challenged, even in multi-billion dollar real estate disputes. It is protected by the federal ESIGN law that deems a properly collected and encrypted electronic signature to be just as legally binding as pen signature on paper, or a photocopy of that, for that matter.

You will not have to prove that the signature is actually theirs (as a final stage your employee is looking at every signature collected on the software and visually comparing it against that customers government issued ID), and you’ve got a witness signature.

What you may have to prove is this:

- Was the customer not fully aware that this agreement applied to them?

- Was the customer misled through a confusing process, to sign something they did not realize they were signing?

- Was the customer let to believe they were signing something completely different?

- Was the Dropzone genuinely interested in making sure that all customers are FULLY AWARE of the agreement they are making with the business before they participated in activities, or was the Dropzone being deceptive?

The next thing to consider is that a trial is not all about facts. There is an emotional side, and a psychological side. This is especially true when you’ve chosen to have a trial by jury. What you need to do is calmly and plainly make a case to the jury that there is no way that the business misled the customer. Here are measures that we take to assure this can happen:

- We have a separate page before the waiver begins that explains how very important it is to read the waiver entirely, stressing that they will be giving up important legal rights.

- Our digital “Pages” are designed not only to look good on the screen, but also in print. Every single page of the waiver is signed separately, and then finally the entire document is signed as one long document. Every single page can then be presented as a SEPARATE EXIBIT, each blown up on a giant poster board with its own signature and date at the bottom. An attorney can then point to it by an attorney during a questioning in addition to handing out copies for individual review.

- After signing every page individually, we present the entire document as scrollable text so that it is signed again: together. We did this for two reasons, first I got a couple of different opinions on how to handle multiple signatures from the document storage perspective and I wanted to cover all bases, and second; this further helps to drive in the point that the customer had every opportunity to read and understand this document before agreeing to the terms.

- Our software uses clean easy to read fonts and black and white contrast. While the waiver content itself is decided by the DZ, we recommend that everything is the same size and is very uniform and clean. Each page of the waiver should be treated like a work of art, as you may need to present it to an audience.

- At the bottom of EVERY PAGE, right next to the signature line, we bluntly declare “You may be injured or killed while skydiving.” Not only are you required to scroll to the bottom of the text, but the bottom of the waiver must be clearly visible at the time you are signing. (you can’t scroll back up to the top without starting your signature over)

- Our solution does not use iPads or other tablets that the customer can walk around with. They sign their waiver at a fixed station using a workstation or fixed laptop computer, exposing an “ATM like environment” that very clearly feels like each individual person is signing the waiver separately, where they have time to overcome any peer pressure, and are not being distracted by others during the process.

- At existing implementations, there are high definition security cameras in place that capture the customer’s face when they walk in the door, while they are watching the tandem video, and while they are at the kiosks. This can be used to show the ‘likeness’ of the customer, that they were not coerced in any way.

- The staff component of this software requires that the signatures be reviewed and compared against the customers ID, the staff member is then able to act as a witness to the transaction.

It is important to note that we went through MANY revisions of this software since the time we first thought it out before we let it go live. There are actually some products that run on an iPad now and claim to accomplish the same thing that my solution does (and technically, they do), but a lot about my solution is the presentation to the customer, and how all of this will be presented to a judge or jury. The iPad solutions that I have seen on the market might work for real estate, and frankly the ones I have reviewed are actually more expensive (Thanks Apple!). That having been said, if you find a competing product that is comparable for less money I can look into matching their price, or clarifying why our product stands out as different.

Do any of you know of drop zones currently using paperless waivers? I'm researching the ease of use and the practicality of it in the real world setting of a busy dz manifest office. How many kiosks, etc.

signed, crushed in my small office by thousands of paper tandem waivers

Do any of you know of drop zones currently using paperless waivers? I'm researching the ease of use and the practicality of it in the real world setting of a busy dz manifest office. How many kiosks, etc.

signed, crushed in my small office by thousands of paper tandem waivers

Perhaps irrelevant and useless, so take it for what it is...

I recently was down at iFly Austin and they use a paperless setup to sign in and waiver. Granted the waiver is (probably) different....I never read anything, so who knows.....

But they have like 4 LCDs setup on wall mounts, seems to keep it flowing pretty well. Might be a place to look at for ideas on volume etc...you type in your bio, check the waiver boxes and sign with your finger digitally....hope that helps a bit.